The Church Bells That Talked

For many years, the church bells whispered to us. But two years ago they started saying things. The beels told us the best prices for groceries. And where to buy them. Meatcuts and canned goods.

They told who the best mechanic in town. And where we could get a good deal on a lawnmower. And what boy needed a haircut. You could learn a lot from church bells. But you had to listen carefully. More

"We listen carefully to everything that bell tells us. It knows a lot. It knows what's important. You hear it start up. A little prayer. A little sermon. You know what's coming. It's got something to say and it rings loud. On Sunday, it tells people to come to church. Don't go fishing."

"It politely suggests. It don't preach. It wants us to pray more often. Read the Bible. That bell will ring and ring and we listen. We know everything it's said. They got a book coming out that has everything that bell has said. And everybody is going to buy."

"Sometimes the bell tells a story. Sometimes it tells a joke. Or recalls some memory of Heaven. If you listen to that bell you learn all kinds of things about the Lord and Heaven. That bells knows us better than we know ourselves."

Ernest Slyman is an Appalachian poet, playwright and humorist who lives in NYC. He is wishful that his work exhibits a proper dose of hyperbole. A sense of ridicule, irony, and wryness and misadventures in wild metaphors, paradox, symbols, free associations, non-sequiturs, and sense of the ridiculous.